Rescue Team On Hand For Any Disasters
Dukeries Advertiser 16 th June 1973
DISASTERS like Lofthouse focus attention on the National Coal Board’s Mines Rescue Service.
But relatively little is known about the day-to-day working of the service.
Each mine has a rescue team. Its size is based on a minimum of one volunteer for every 500 men at the colliery. |
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Rescue team members attend a 14-week, one-day-a-week basic-training course involving first aid, rescue, detection of gases, fire fighting and life saving.
Twenty two pits, including Thoresby, Ollerton, Bevercotes and Bilsthorpe, are attached to the board’s rescue station at Mansfield Woodhouse.
Teams spend four, four hour refresher sessions there each year, as well as doing two practices annually at their own pits.
Station
Eight men under Superintendent John Streets are stationed at Mansfield Woodhouse, where they operate rather like a fire station - working a day shift and being on call at night to provide round-the-clock cover.
The service was established in Mansfield Woodhouse in 1909. The present station was built in 1957.
DukeriesAdvertiser photographer Peter Hayward spent a morning there with Thoresby Colliery’s rescue team.
Left: Mines rescue corps member Barrie Humphries plays possum in a simulated accident in a tunnel under the Mansfield Woodhouse station.
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Below: The National Coal Board's first line of defence in the event of a pit disaster is its rescue corps stationed at Mansfield Woodhouse;
left to right, Brigadesmen Derek Seddon, Barrie Humphries, Trevor Mitchell and Albert Kelk, Station Officer Raymond Cooper and
Brigadesmen Eric Westwood. Tony Llndford and Graham Best.
